Calle de Rafael de Riego

The name honors Rafael del Riego y Flórez (1784-1823), an Asturian soldier who, on the morning of 1 January 1820 at Las Cabezas de San Juan, roused his troops in the name of the Constitution. That uprising forced Ferdinand VII to swear the Cádiz text of 1812 and opened the Liberal Triennium, the three years when Spain lived under constitutional government. Riego’s march was set to a tune that passed into history as the Hymn of Riego, bound forever to the liberal cause and, later, to the republican one. Riego’s end was brutal. When the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis restored absolute rule, he was sentenced to death for treason. On 7 November 1823 he was dragged in a basket to the gallows of Madrid’s plaza de la Cebada, amid the jeers of a crowd that had cheered him only a few years before.